This Explains So Much.

I’m often critical of “Saturday Night Live’s” writing, and this video that reveals the show’s writing process isn’t exactly improving my opinion of it. In it, Bobby Moynihan tells us about “writing night” at “SNL,” and boy oh boy does it operate like a finely tuned Swiss watch:

It is currently 11:13 p.m. Sometimes you’ll have an idea for a sketch and you’ll grab a writer and write that idea. Or you’ll just at three o’clock in the morning walk in, say something stupid, and end up writing that. That’s usually what gets in.

We also learn that the writers throw pencils into the ceiling when they can’t think of ideas. It’s like a little hanging graveyard of creativity, with every pencil marking a Gilly sketch that farted its way into existence.